


Kyrie Eleison

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [44]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Ninth Doctor Era, Regeneration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-06
Updated: 2011-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 01:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><i>Kyrie Eleison</i> is Greek, from the Mass according to the Roman Rite, and translates as “Lord have mercy”.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Kyrie Eleison

**Author's Note:**

> _Kyrie Eleison_ is Greek, from the Mass according to the Roman Rite, and translates as “Lord have mercy”.

He spends his Ninth life recovering from his Eighth; withdrawn and cranky, he deals with the survivor’s guilt the best way he can.  Knowing that it had had to happen, that he had had no choice, does nothing to ease the shattering, yawning silence inside his head.

Being the last of his kind is, for him, a fate worse than death.  When a telepath, who has had a connexion all their life to others of their kind, loses that connexion for ever in the most sudden and brutal of ways, death is but a blessing.

He's never been the sort of man who has had much luck with blessings, and it shows.

The way back’s a slow one.  Slowly, first with Rose and then with Jack, he learns to start letting others past the protective barriers he’s thrown up; seeing how the results are not the unmitigated disaster he’d feared helps the healing process begin.  Loyalty from his friends, for that is what they become, turns out to be a concept he can believe in once more and when it really matters those same friends, the ones to whom he had opened up and let see the real him, come through.

It's a revelation.

In the dying moments of that life, with his mind already full, almost to bursting, with the consciousness that is replacing him, two more sorely needed lessons about the true nature of friendship sink in.

He learns that, for some, loyalty to a friend trumps fear; for that, Jack had been his teacher.  And Rose?  Rose, the one for whom he gave his life rather than watch her die, teaches him that love, of any kind at all, is stronger even than death itself.  She’d helped him learn to live again and, for that, he will always love her; whatever else happens.  That love is, after all, part of what made the new man he’s becoming.

  



End file.
